7 Lessons I Learned Living With OMGPOP And Its CEO Dan Porter

Dan Porter hired me at Virgin, and has been subletting me space
in various OMGPOP offices since I founded Voxy in 2010. He
is also on the advisory board of Voxy.

Here's what I learned while working alongside him.

1. Investing is personal; build incredible relationships
with your VCs. Business is about people, and the people
who extended OMGPOP a lifeline last year (when it seemed almost
illogical) were betting on the team and a CEO who had built up
trust.

2. Trust your gut when it comes to Cupcakes and
Puppies. These were the central focus of some of
OMGPOP’s previous games, and, while they were developed based on
user feedback, they were also just intuitively lame. Cupcakes and
Puppies were never going to become the cultural phenomenon of
Draw Something.

3. React fast, and take control of the process.
The ability to manage explosive growth so effectively is almost
as rare a skill as making the game of a lifetime. From
all-nighters by the dev team (huge props to CWH and Jason), to
talks with Ghostface Killah, to rumors of a potential movie in
the works, Dan rallied the team and executed flawlessly.

4. Metrics matter. While Dan knows numbers
better than most, intuition is what drives him. But Draw
Something was the first OMGPOP game to publicly display its
analytics and usage data to the team throughout its meteoric
rise. For a data junkie like me, who openly shares every number
to my entire team, this is not a coincidence. Watching the
Drawings per Download ratio creep from 10-12 one day and from
12-14 the next was early proof that this product had found a
market, and that Draw Something was going to
explode.

5. Collaboration trumps competition in games.
I’m not necessarily the authority on gaming here, and this point
has been made many times before. But as Draw Something’s DAUs
grow beyond 25 million, and as the game amazingly takes root in
non-English speaking markets like China, it should be pointed out
that people want to play with each other rather than against each
other.

6. Let everyone around enjoy the success. Make
big moments special for everyone. From free iPads for everyone on
the team, to minimum bonuses for each employee and a total office
re-design including new iMacs and acoustic guitars everywhere,
everybody at OMGPOP was along for the ride. The celebration
spread through every team member, from the interns on up.

7. Never, ever, ever give up. Watching Dan and
OMGPOP’s incredible, “bottom of the 9th, two outs” Cinderella
story has been the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in business.
There were some dark days at OMGPOP over the last four years, and
it was hard to watch my friend and mentor struggle. But even when
board meetings got bleak, he never stopped believing in the team,
in their collective knowledge and lessons learned, and in
himself.